If you’re blogging for yourself what you really need is a diary.  Blogging should make you happy.  But it’s a public act. Fundamentally, it’s for other people.

Don’t get me wrong. If you blog just for the joy of it, I won’t think any less of you than I do of people with more reputable hobbies like bowling, checkers and speed dating. You go on and be you.

In my case, it’s part of a personal social networking strategy. I’m sharing what I’ve come up with in case you (dear reader) want to do your own.

This whole process was originally done on the back of an envelope during a cross-Atlantic flight (the entertainment system was broken).  So don’t be intimidated. This ain’t rocket science.

Here’s my step by step…

First thing I did was work out my goals.  What do I want from social networks and my personal website?

Goal: Let people find me, connect to me and build on that connection.

Then I had a think about what I get out of this goal. (What’s the purpose?)

Benefits:

Ideas and knowledge – people know stuff, they tell their friends, they need to know what you want to know.

Professional opportunities – collaborations in my current job, and maybe a new one someday.

Helping hands – It’s hard to know what you’ll need help with, but we all need a little help sometimes.

Learning – about socialnetworking, staying in practice with my writing, etc.

Personal power – I’ll admit it. When I originally wrote this up I’d just been (mildly but annoyingly) screwed around by both the airline and Apple (overbooked flight, and the famous iPhone “erase and sync” issue).  So I was feeling a bit like I should have some personal leverage for times like these.

Fun – It looks like fun anyway.

OK, so who do I need to connect to to get all that goodness?

Key audiences:

Professional colleges – Share knowledge and opportunities, learn together, trade information.

Casual friends (people I barely know) – Stay in touch. Keep a diverse network. Fun and learning. Never know when they’ll make a good helping hand.

Fans – Yeah, I want fans.  Not “a lot” of fans.  More like a relatively small number of what Kevin Kelly means when he talks about true fans.

Why do I separate out “fans” from the other two groups?  Two reasons…

1)  There’s a limit to how many people you can personally connect to.  Probably, it’s about 150.  That just seems to be how our brains are wired.  I’m sure it varies from person to person, and probably it changes when you’ve got computer assisted relationships (like the way social network sites and email both can reflect your relationships and past conversations back at you).

2)  Relationships with “fans” are different than with even casual friends or colleges.  There’s more push communication.  Though feedback loops are still important it’s done more often with some kind of aggregation (like polls) or sampling (guessing what a lot of people thing by talking to a few).

I’m not sure about this fan thing, by the way.  Thoughts welcome.  I don’t think people will think of themselves as “fans”. It’s not like they’ll be going around wearing, “Andrew Davies is my god” t-shirts.  (Though I’m willing to arrange for some if there’s interest.)  And the groups are not exclusive – some people will be in more than one, and they may shift around over time. So, probably, “fans” is the wrong word, but I can’t think of a better one right now.

OK, so that’s who I’m doing this for.  Is there anyone else that I need to keep in mind?

Unintended and fortuitous audiences:

Close friends and family – Mainly, I’ll keep in touch with these folks through one to one contact (email, skype, phone, face to face).  Very likely, they’ll see my online stuff as well.

Famous people – I’m not going to worry about them.  It would be cool to have some famous Facebook friends or Twitter followers, and it would probably help me reach my goals.  But it’s not an end itself.

“The government” and haters – I always tell people I’m training to blog, “The last person in the world you want to read your post, is probably the first person in the world who’s going to read it.  They’re the most motivated.”  This goes for anyone with an online presence, but some of us more than others.

Potential future employers/clients/bosses – First thing they’re going to do is check you out online.

How will I interact with those audiences?

Tools and tactics:

Facebook – Colleagues and friends mainly.  Especially good for people I don’t interact with much, but want to keep a connection with.  Some of the more hard core fans.  Would like to get about 150 friends this year.

  • Quality is more important than numbers though – I should “know” everyone.
  • Should post several times per week.
  • Photos are nice as long as they are interesting, and hopefully tell something about me (artistic is not as important as interesting).  I should interact with at least 10% of my friends in any given month.

LinkedIn – Professional networking.  I’ve already got a pretty decent presence there, and it’s pretty low effort.

  • Should maintain it, but not put in much energy.
  • Should try to get a few (2-5) recommendations.
  • Only connect to people I know professionally.

Twitter – Good for fans, and professional colleges.  Also good for weak connections.  It’s a very simple interaction.  Want to top 500 followers this year.

  • Post about three times per day, including maybe one or two retweets.
  • @reply people I don’t know (or don’t know well) when I’ve got something interesting to contribute.
  • Encourage people to follow me (in email signature, on blog, on Facebook, business card, etc).
  • Feed it into the blog to keep a fresh stream of content.

Blog (what you’re reading) – I don’t expect a lot of people to be return visitors, or RSS subscribers. People will come to see specific content mentioned in other media.  It’s also a place to mark significant personal updates. Future employers will be an important niche audience someday, but I’m not job hunting at the moment.

Flickr – I’ve done photography both for fun and as part of being a professional blogger.  Flickr is my professional showcase.  Since I’m not actively selling myself as a photographer (it’s an incredibly tough business these days), I’m not going to invest in it much.  It’s more of a professional extra, and mainly for fun.

YouTube – People might want to see videos I like.  So I’ll favorite good stuff.

Things to play with and think about

Birthdays – These are great.  It’s natural to send people a note on their birthday (can be via skype, email, Facebook, or whatever).  But I don’t know how to find out and keep track of people’s birthdays.

Foursquare, etc – I’m sure I should be playing with location based services. Just to figure out why I should be playing with them.

Suggestions welcome

That’s all for now.  Please do send me a tweet, drop me a line, post a comment or whatever with any thoughts and ideas.

This is very much a work in progress.  I’ll keep coming back and revising it.